Weekly meeting 29.03.2010

March 29th, 2010

Here are the outcomes of the discussed topics from today’s project monthly meeting.

Discussed:

* Review of progress to date, and plan of catching up

* Review of workshop organised to date

Actions:

* Lisha

  • Set up project wiki
  • Put documents on project website: IPR license,

* David:

  • Check licensing, BSD

Outstanding Actions:

* David:

  • backup plan if Tao can’t come back on time
  • check completion report requirements

* Lisha

  • Note dependencies (using other code libraries)
  • Technical documentation (e.g. javadoc, XCRI)
  • Provide source & jar file
  • Design docs, UML diagrams
  • Test plan – should be ready to present at April’s monthly meeting

Monthly meeting 24.03.2010

March 24th, 2010

Here are the outcomes of the discussed topics from today’s project monthly meeting.

Discussed:

* Review of progress to date:

  • have done the problem analysis, use case scenarios, requirements analysis, and specification
  • working on the demonstrator design
  • started looking into technical issues that may affect the design

* Review of progress against the work plan submitted to JISC – Progress OK, a bit behind, but will catch up soon:

  • have completed the workpackage1, the demonstrator requirements and specification (but haven’t put it on project website yet)
  • still working on the workpackage2, the demonstrator design – we are behind on this task!
  • have started investigate required technique for the code library that indentified in the design process – we are ahead on this task!

Actions:

* David:

  • backup plan if Tao can’t come back on time
  • make sure everything is in the blog and wiki
  • check completion report requirements
  • budget tracking

* Lisha

  • Check licensing, IPR
  • Note dependencies (using other code libraries)
  • Technical documentation (e.g. javadoc, XCRI)
  • Provide source & jar file
  • Design docs, UML diagrams
  • Demonstrator: web application or stand alone?
  • Test plan – should be ready to present at April’s monthly meeting

* Tao

  • Coding + documentation

Weekly meeting 22.03.2010

March 22nd, 2010

Here are the outcomes of the discussed topics from today’s meeting.

Agreed:

*Andy, Lester, and Gary will be invited to our monthly meeting at 9:30am, on the 24th March

*The agenda of the monthly meeting will be:

  • Notes from last meeting
  • Maters raised
  • Project progress
  • Updates
  • Plans for future
  • Workshop plan

 

Actions:

*Discuss workshop presentation detail – Lisha & David

*Send Lisha the latest version of the project plan – David

*Invite John from Edentity to the workshop – Lisha

*Arrange summer internship

*Provide information to be reviewed in the monthly meeting: – Lisha

  • Workshop participant list
  • Workshop agenda
  • Food arrangement
  • How to get there?
  • How can the participants claim travel expense?

 

Outstanding action from last week:

*Make project documents (work package 1) available on the project website.  — Lisha

*Review project progress; send it with the links of the documents to all group members.  — Lisha

*Send workshop reminder email by the end of the week, phone anyone who hasn’t responded yet on next Monday.  — Lisha

*Require participant to book tickets and send us the expenses in advance asap.  — Lisha

*Check project finance.  — David

weekly meeting 15.03.2010

March 15th, 2010

Here are the outcome of the discussed topics from today’s meeting.

Agreed:

Project weekly meeting will be at 10am every Monday.  This will involve Lisha, David, and Tao.

From April onward, the project monthly meeting will be at 9:30 am, on the last Monday of the month.    (But the one coming is on Wednesday, the 24th March.)  This will involve Gary, Lester, and Andy as well.

We will need to discuss workshop plan, project documents, and financy in our next monthly meeting.

Actions:

Make project documents (workpackage 1) avalible on the project website.  — Lisha

Make notes of project meetings avalible on the project blog.  — Lisha

Review project prograss, send it with the links of the documents to all group members.  — Lisha

Send monthly meeting reminder email to the group members, and inform them about Tao’s holiday time.  — Tao

Send workshop reminder email by the end of the week, phone anyone who hasn’t responded yet on next Monday.  — Lisha

Require  attendees to book tickets and send us the expenses in advance asap.  — Lisha

Check project finance.  — David

A General System Infrastructure (1)?

March 12th, 2010

In the weekly meeting this Tuesday, David suggested that the idea of using mobile phones to replace the id card from an undergraduate (Joe, Lester’s student) has a similar scenario with e-Certificate. After talking with Joe and giving her a possible system solution, I do realize there are quite a lot similar scenarios. Actually, this remains me what I read in my first year of PhD study: I was interested in pervasive computing, and one of its goal is all in handsets — no keys, no wallets, no id cards. All of them are integrated into mobile terminals, the only device you will carry when you leave the house. Of couse, there are quite a number of challenges required to be met before this vision comes into being, especially the security and privacy issue.

Based on the system design from Lisha, I do believe it is possible to establish a general system infrastructure to solve security issues in similar scenarios. The following is the informal and basic idea I have so far (no detailed technical discussion).

System Requirement:
* Traditional (some paper-based) entities are and will be changed into electronic version
* Security issues required by the electronic version entities: confidentiality (only right users can view), integrity (entities can not be modified by a malicious adversary), authentication (electronic entities can determine and prove what the owners claim)
* electronic entities are issued (can be re-issued) by various departments (e.g. universities, goverment, banks), and there are no central systems that store them (people will not trust such a central system).

System Members: issuers, inspectors, owners (with their electronic entities)

System Workflow: issuers issue e-entities to owners; owners keep their e-entities (on their laptop or mobile handhelds); owners send their entities to inspectors, and inspectors verify e-entities with verification systems (local or remote).

I lose keeping technical track of pervasive computing since finishing the PhD, and believe there should be similar security frameworks designed by others (maybe not). However, our system in the eCert project must be able to show advantages if applying it in the pervasive computing field. At least, the output of this general system infrastructure could be a conference paper.

AIM 08/09 Start-Up Meeting

March 12th, 2010

Last Thursday, David, Lisha, Teresa and me went to Devonport Hotel at Greenwich to attend the AIM 08/09 Start-Up meeting, which is the first time of meeting with our program manager, Chris, after the eCert project kicked off. There are nine projects funded by the Access and Identity Management 08/09 Call, and our team is the first one who made the presentation in the meeting (probably due to the alphabetic order of the project name). Please see a couple of “unclear” pictures from my iPhone.

One of the projects that really interests me is Identity & Access Management using Social Networking Technologies, in which they are going to use semantic web technologies (RDF, FOAF) and traditional security technologies (e.g. public key, SSL) to help identity and access management. Based on my previous experience, I do not think using semantic web technologies will make a huge progress for the identity management. Probably, defining a general model for people and their relationship will provide a clear representation of underlying data, which is an application of the Linked Data idea. But is that all? I will keep an eye on this project and any new update on FOAF+SSL.

Another good thing is the nice lunch buffet, especially in the condition that I had an early breakfast in the morning 🙂 Walking in the Greenwich park after a full eating lets me think about an sentence which I do not know who said: Happy life is always same……IMG_0022IMG_0023IMG_0024

Abstraction Sumission for ALT-C Workshop

February 28th, 2010

We submitted an abstract, named E-qualification Certificate System for E-portfolio, for the workshop in the ATL-C conference. This year, the ALT-C conference will be held at Nottingham on 7-9 September. We are going to take this good opportunity to demonstrate the system implementation, disseminate the project results, and get feedbacks from participants.

Since the formal workshop only lasts 60 minutes, it is impossible to elaborate the system design (Fortunately, we plan to make a one-day workshop before the conference starts, which enable us to demonstrate our system detailedly ). Instead, only a brief project background will be discussed, and the workshop will focus on participant activities in using the system, analysing deficiencies, suggesting improvements, evaluating the interface(s), relating the affordances to their own needs, etc. The final aim of the workshop is to enable participants to understand the potential benefits the e-Certificate system offers, and to work through the practical issues that might be encountered in the introduction of such a system into an institution.

During the writing of the abstract, many people gave us advice about how to fill contents into a 60-minute workshop. Especially thanks for Lester and Gary. We will be informed about our submission by mid May. Hopefully, our abstract will get accepted.

Hello world!

February 23rd, 2010

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